MQM

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New
York, March 3, 2014--A Pakistani court on Saturday convicted six defendants for their
roles in the murder of Wali Khan Babar, a Geo TV
journalist who was shot dead in Karachi in January
2011, according to news reports. The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes
the convictions--the first
in the murder of a Pakistani journalist--but calls on authorities to ensure
the masterminds are brought to justice.

Ali Chishti, who writes for The Friday Times, has gone public in
Islamabad with details of his abduction and beating last Friday, August 30.
Chishti is making the rounds of TV talk shows describing how he was picked up
in Karachi by uniformed police driving a police vehicle, blindfolded, switched
to another police vehicle, taken to a small room somewhere in Karachi, and
beaten by men he does not think were police officers. After nine hours, he was
dropped by the side of the road at 4:30 Saturday morning.

On Monday, a well-known
Pakistani journalist came to our office in New York. We had been messaging and
texting for a few weeks, so I knew what to expect. Despite the harsh reality
check that CPJ's Sheryl Mendez and I offered during our 90-minute meeting, he
is going ahead with the process of applying for asylum in the United States. "I
would rather live as a poor man in a mud hut than as a king in a castle who
feared for his life," he told us. It sounded like a line he had prepared to
convince us, and perhaps himself, that he was doing the right thing.